Sorry it’s been so long since my last…well, my last anything but life tends to get in thsometimes and I won’t bore you with the details. Yep, shock of shocks; I do in fact have a life. However with recent news about another blunder made by DC Comics, this time concerning the last minute aborted plans for the marriage of Batwoman to her girlfriend it just added to the pile of missteps the company has made since the 2011 reboot of their entire universe. Now I could get into a countdown about the actions of DC but internet reviewer The Last Angry Geek made such a video that explains their blunders better than I ever could. So I would advise my readers to check out that video after reading this article.
I have to admit that
I was one of those who questioned why on earth DC was going this route, aside
from the obvious cash grab that is. But I had resigned myself to judge slowly
and see for myself what the results of this relaunch would be, the results of
that were rather disappointing. I can’t say that I read every issue of the New
52, but I can say that in the majority of the books that I did read I almost
immediately noticed a trend, a questionable new direction. This direction could
arguably be traced back to around 2004 when a lot of DC’s books started to take
a darker tone very much like Marvel’s books. This to me is a rather big mistake
because DC for all intents and purposes tossed away one of the elements that
made the company stand out, that of the lighter tone of the world and of the
idea that these characters were the type one could look up to versus Marvel’s
character being the types one could relate to.
Since 2004 that
dynamic had been gradually shifting with the characters being written with the
attempt to be more relatable but in the worst ways such as being more egotistical,
melodramatic, given to extreme shifts in character or even any amount of character
purged all together. The New 52 seems to be the culmination of this direction
with a few more add ons, that being that the stories tend to reflect the worst
attributes of two eras: DC’s Silver Age and early 90s Image Comics. Basically
what it boils down to is this: the stories for the most part seem to be very
thin in terms of development, almost as though they were first drafts that got
rushed out. Image Comics had this very same problem but made up for it with
very flashy art work but even then the chinks in that armor were noticeable. The
extreme bodybuilder look, the lack of expression in character’s faces the lack
of background art, the over-sexualization of female characters were all
hallmarks of comic books during the 1990s but it was Image that was at the
forefront of these practices.
Don’t get me
wrong there are some books from the New 52 that I do enjoy the new Swamp Thing
and Animal Man series are personal favorites and of course the Batman books
have been consistently good. As a Superman fan I find those books rather
lacking but if I was to launch into that this would be a much longer post. For
the most part though the people I’ve talked to seem to be for the most part
disappointed with this new direction and I doubt that DC has any intention to
reverse course on this endeavor any time soon. So what can we, as comic book
fans do? I think I do have a workable solution to this, I don’t know if anyone
has mentioned this but I think it would be a worthwhile course of action.
I’ve always been a
big believer in voting with your wallet, and I think this is a case where that
philosophy can be applied. Instead of buying the New 52 books, or at least the
ones that aren’t worth our effort, we should buy up everything from before this
current reboot. Every single issue, mini-series, trade paperback, collection,
and e-comic from that era, if you don’t like the current direction then buy up
the stuff from the previous direction. It’s all out there and available and it
would show a noticeable shift in DC’s sales reports and tell them that THIS is
what the fans want, not what THEY SAY we want but what we really want. Would DC
respond to this? How would they respond? I don’t know, all I can say with any
certainty is: it couldn’t hurt.
Here's a link to the Last Angry Geek's video concerning DC Comics and their misstepsTop 11 DCNU mistakes
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